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[Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning] Game is out! Push A to brutally murder pixies!

in the game I don't care why I am doing things, choice means dick all because you can't get invested in the blandness of the story- but I want to do all the things cause its damn fun.

I'm loving it man.

You can't get invested? I was completely addicted to the House of Ballads chain the whole way through, not to mention the little journals and tidbits you get to read in the webwood.

And there was one journal by a corpse in a cage near this cultist shrine at the end of a cave that was so creepy it had me jumping at any sound in the house on my way back out.

I'm with mojojoeo. I couldn't have cared less about those elf LARPers or whatever was going on in the House of Ballads, and that seems like the best quest chain the game has to offer so I'm not really playing for any reason other than it's really fun.

I haven't gone deep into the main quest yet, but I found pretty much every questgiver to be overly melodramatic. Oh, you need to do this right now, or utter doom and destruction will befall upon us. That kinda detracts pretty badly from the immersiveness. Also, the Fae are unnecessarily pompous, but I suppose that's who they are.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, don't get me wrong, "really fun" is all I want in a game and I definitely am not regretting spending money on this...I just don't care at all about the world or plot.

I think I like the second one, but it's open for debate. Relentless Assault not causing any armor loss at level 6 is a strong pull into that build.

My battlemage uses hammers.
I used the summon minion for a while, but later it just was useless and buggy. Issues with it going hostile to you, even after paying off crimes.

Relentless Assault makes the game stupidly easy and a hammer build just goes with it so well since its slower and all.

Of course I had blacksmithing/sagecraft maxed, so my gear had stupid amounts of HP/MP and my hammer just broke the game with how good it was. Also put the epic gem that has 60% chance to stun anyone that hits you made the hammer build just silly good along with that talent of more damage on stunned stuff. Mix matched might gear with sorc helm/gloves for some extra mana regen, spam earthquake when relentless is down if you need to crowd control lots of enemies.... usually everything is just getting stunned by the hammer anyway. I'm not sure how it works on bigger mobs, more damage they take they eventually are chain stunned as well with hammers.

even if you don't like the gameplay or the story, 2 out of 5 or 4.5 out of 10 are fucking harsh

this game isn't a bug-riddled shitfest, it's very solidly produced with good production values

it may not be the most inspired thing in the entire world, but it's not THAT bad no matter who you are

Wow, really? I'm not normally one to put much stock in reviews, but most of the time I agree with the scores. This is one of those rare occasions where I have to wonder if they even played the right game.

Like you said, the game isn't a bug-riddled shitfest, the production is top notch, and the combat is easily the best out of all these types of RPGs.

Sometimes when you see wildly different scores it is because the game is kind of a niche title, but that certainly isn't the case here.

To make up for those shitty scores I shall score the game myself:

Axen gives Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning 16 Bananas out of 10 Monkeys.

It's a major problem with the scoring system for games. The Top 2 scores (9 and 10) are based off of quality (and more often how much the game company paid the writers/magazine/website for the review) while anything less than that is almost entirely off of "does the system have bugs?". However the reviewers tend to throw out low scores for games even if they don't have any bugs in the system. It tends to be an attempt at balancing their given scores so that they don't appear to be giving everything 9 out of 10, so games from their advertisers rank 9-10 while non-advert games get thrown onto the opposite side of the scale for balance.

The only good thing he does is he will keep a single mob busy, so hes like a really long CC. Thats it. His damage sucks and I never noticed his life leech to be worth a shit due to my overpowered gear.

The bad things he does, he gets in front of your combos all the fucking time... you get used to it and sorta have to combo around him, but its still stupid.
For a long time he never had the hostile bug with me, then randomly he would get hit with those orbs from the sorc shield. After that I would have to go pay my crimes and he wouldnt aggro me until the balls accidentally hit him... and like I said with the previous bad thing about him, he gets in your way so those balls will hit him.

I will admit that stealth speed is way way to slow. I definitely missed some stealth kills due to that.

You can roll without breaking stealth, which speeds things up substantially.

Which is really annoying, tbh. It's like, they couldn't have had a slower version of sprint usable in sneak? Instead I have to chain rolls together and listen to HUH, HUH, HUH, HUH just so I can get into range of a moving target. Because, clearly, that's stealthier than sneaking faster.

While I'm at it, here's a shot at a longsword/faeblade/bow/magic Universalist. It takes into account the +3 to all skills Destiny bonus, as well as the fact that the cap for skills tends to be either 2 above the normal max (in the case of most skills with scaling percentile bonuses), or just the normal cap (in the case of skills that grant new moves). There may be a couple skills that don't scale like I think they do, in which case they might have two extra points in them. I'll have to investigate when I get home.

While I'm at it, here's a shot at a longsword/faeblade/bow/magic Universalist. It takes into account the +3 to all skills Destiny bonus, as well as the fact that the cap for skills tends to be either 2 above the normal max (in the case of most skills with scaling percentile bonuses), or just the normal cap (in the case of skills that grant new moves). There may be a couple skills that don't scale like I think they do, in which case they might have two extra points in them. I'll have to investigate when I get home.

Sadly, any build using weapons for two trees seems to suffer from the fact that it's pretty hard to unlock all the moves in both trees without sacrificing a lot of other stuff. Kinda sucky since it means you can't do really cool stuff like greatsword/chakrams and still use all the moves.

this is an undeserved response. KoA doesn't do compelling sidestories (no, I haven't done house of ballads yet but I do not see it redeeming the entire experience), interesting/balanced loot (is that yet another epic/set piece 10 levels under me when I'm new to this area? hokay), or interesting combat content for the vast majority of its sidequests. what exactly should my compulsion be to do these things, a pavlovian response to the quest marker? there is no observable reward when you can just buy the next tier of weapon from a shop.

I got past mel senshir, which was easily the best section of the game thus far next to adessa, into the swamp or whatever and haven't played in days. it's just too much to go from good verging on great content to "run around this swamp looting hidden objects for bad loot, killing enemies you've seen a hundred times and doing a main quest that involves running to all corners of this horribly boring zone".

I tend not to make posts like these because I don't find them terribly constructive or even interesting but there is so, so much apologism occurring for this game being just barely above average. I'm going to assume a lot of it is people reacting to a dynamic combat system in the wake of skyrim, and I can sympathize, but for me I'm not sure it's enough to slog through the rest of the game unless the ending is spectacular.

I'll agree that a lot of the side quests are just kind of bland and could use a bit something extra. But there's a good one here or there, which about what you get in most RPGs (See Mass Effect). The main quest and faction quests are pretty good so far.

As for the gear, ignore the level requirements. Look at the skill requirements. The level requirements are really, really low and probably just there to keep single tree builds in line. The skill requirements should actually match up much more closely to where you actually are.

Welp, that certainly hoses this build a good bit. On the flipside, what the fuck is a Destiny doing granting skill points? All the other Destiny bonuses are combat-related.

Have you tried Blacksmithing and Sagecrafting yet? +3 skills might as well be +50% damage. Or +50% crit if you prefer. Or maybe +20 health per second.

I have Blacksmithing maxed, and Sagecrafting up to where I can craft epic gems. The thing is, at level 40, I'll only need to craft one last set of gear, and then I won't need Blacksmithing or Sagecrafting anymore. If I decide to tweak my gear later on, all it takes is a respec to get my Skills where I need them to be.

On the other hand, there's no way to gain the bonuses of what would be +3 to all Abilities.

I am obsessed with those Lorestones. I especially loved the ones that were just random villagers recording their nonsense in them. But I mean, the sets giving passive bonuses that are always on and stack with themselves and your abilities and gear AND you get XP for finding them? Yeah, first thing I do in a new zone is hunt me down some mother fucking lorestones.

the game is already too easy on its hardest difficulty and leveling only seems to make it easier, and while there is no lack of "cool talents" in this game it's awkwardly counterbalanced with how I'm slowly breaking the game harder and harder because the enemies don't alter their strategies in any way to deal with my new toys. yes, this concept exists in almost every rpg ever, but it's usually not this pronounced. yes, I play might spec. no, the fault does not lie with me that I chose a spec in a single-player game and it meshes poorly with the rest of the game if played anywhere close to optimally. I could change it, but that's not happening 75% of the way through the game.

treasure

99% of it is garbage, and it's even worse in that you get so many epics and the majority of them are just horrible in relation to their location and what gear you have when you get them. some of them look great compared to my top-tier greens, and I do wish that since I'm reminded so much of wow when I play the game they'd have gone the extra mile and included a transmogrification system.

Twisted Fates

these have value as completed lore cool points and as stat bonuses. the former doesn't really interest me since the game's lore is the very definition of generic, and the latter just makes me more of an untouchable god-figure.

lorestones.

yeah, what? most lorestones are perfectly incoherent and as far as I'm concerned they exist for xp only. some "reward" that is, just throw a few more mobs in my way and I'd never notice the difference.

I really didn't try to break this game and make it tedious, it handed me all the tools and its half-baked progression system to do it myself with only the lightest input required. what I do not understand is how you can tell me to play around the game's mediocrity and somehow consider that valid advice.